The bathroom is one of the most important rooms in your house. The other “most important” room is the kitchen. All of the other rooms are just empty boxes into which you dump your stuff. But the kitchen and the bath – that’s where you do your serious business.

There are generally two situations when an owner may consider spending money in either of these areas:

• To make the house more comfortable for themselves – Comfort might involve fixing or getting rid of shabby surroundings that have outlived their appeal. Or comfort might be making modifications to make the premises easier to use as one’s personal capabilities changes with time.

• To make the house more appealing to potential buyers – Nobody owns a property forever; everything eventually gets sold. Buyers tend to shun properties that are in need of major facility upgrades.

These two reasons are not mutually exclusive. There is no reason why, in anticipation of some far-off but inevitable future sale, you should not enjoy the fruits of your efforts here and now.

Why is this place falling apart?

Bathing areas take a tremendous beating because of their constant exposure to water and high humidity. Without constant human intervention, an entire wood frame house will completely disappear from the face of the earth within fifty years (the cellar hole will be gone only a few decades after that). Brick houses take only marginally longer.

The wear and tear that you see in your bathtub area is just a few frames out of a very long movie. You are witnessing, first hand, the natural progression of Mother Nature’s wrath. Water is the star of the show, and gravity is producer/director. Your bathtub, unfortunately, is the set.

Why does it have to be this way?

It doesn’t. But it does take, as mentioned above, “constant human intervention”. That means, YOU. It sounds simplistic, but maintenance starts with cleaning. (Is there anybody out there who actually enjoys it?). I, myself, am as lazy as they come, so I’m always looking for easier ways to do this stuff.

Inevitably, a dab or two of real maintenance creeps into the picture. Grout, caulk and various other water seal techniques used on an intermittent basis will prolong the useful life of your establishment.

Also on the hit parade of maintenance “gotta-know’s” are drain and faucet issues:

• Drain Traps: What they are and why you should care.• How that little drain lever works, and why you should care.• “Man, I wish that faucet would stop dripping”, and why you should care.

Do I really have to tear it all out?

Again, no. As ugly as it may look, repair is always an option. Faulty grout can be raked out and replaced. Loose tiles can be reset, or sections of tiles replaced with new insets. Even fiberglass can be patched. Bathtubs can have their surfaces refinished.

These options are usually much less expensive, time consuming and invasive than outright replacement. They can “freshen-up” an otherwise sad looking face, and extend the lifespan of your bathing area by years.

The downside? You get back the same as what you started with. That’s not necessarily bad.

I can’t stand it. I really, really want a new tub.

That’s great, but what kind? While the list of specific bath area products is virtually limitless, your pocketbook and the space that you have to work with probably are not.

Within the confines of a typical bathroom remodel, the most common possibilities involve utilizing an existing bathroom space (or maybe stealing a little more space from some neighboring room)and installing a tub or shower unit in roughly the same spot as a previously existing unit.

With this in mind, the usual suspects are:

• A “regular” tub or shower with prefabricated walls – This route will often be the least expensive. The added cost of the prefabricated walls is more than offset by the reduced labor of installation, when compared to custom finished (tile) walls.

• A “regular” tub or shower basin with custom walls – While more expensive than prefabricated walls, tile provides a lot of opportunity for elegant artistic expression. A well executed design can transform the cold utility of the bathroom into a sensuous retreat.

• A custom tile shower basin with custom walls – The ultimate in versatility. Because it is specifically designed for the occasion, a custom shower basin has no dimensional limits. It can occupy any available space, and can include benches, shelves, foot rests and any other amenity. For maximum elegance and functionality, custom shower basins can be designed so that there is no unsightly barrier on the floor making a line between the shower and the rest of the bathroom. “Barrier-free” showers are probably the most universally useful option.

• Walk-in bathtubs – These units permit a bath lover to continue their bathing habits when they find themselves being challenged by the task of climbing into and out of a normal bathtub. A door in the tub provides relatively easy access with only a small step-up. These tubs can be used for showers also, and are often accompanied by matching prefabricated fiberglass wall systems.

What’s it going to take to get this thing into my house?

Unless you’re building a new house, or an addition on an existing house, you’ve got to get rid of the current tub or shower before the new one can go in. This involves some dust, loud noises, and a pile of debris.

Some units, like walk-in tubs, can be installed in one day by a couple of experienced guys that don’t fool around. The more involved the custom work, the longer the installation process will take. A barrier-free shower may take about a week.

Your journey starts here . . .

The demolition: a.k.a. “the fun part”

The old tub or shower, and probably a good chunk of the walls, have got to go. Say “Goodbye”, and don’t plan on salvaging anything. Mercifully, this should be over relatively quickly.

The rough stuff: “Nice set of pipes!”

If you’re ever going to have a new tub faucet (“valve”, in plumbing jargon), do it now or forever hold your peace. The same goes for all the other under-gore that you never think about: wall and floor framing, insulation and vapor barrier, wall sheathing, drain plumbing.